The last opera of the season

The weather got cool last week and I had to take my coat and scarf back out for a few days.  But now I've put them away again.

Wednesday I had to go see Dr. Hassan to get my Cipralex prescription renewed. (Why does the expiry always come sooner than I expect?) I went without it for a couple of days, and had dreams more vivid than usual.  In one I was visiting Walter White's family, not in Albuquerque where Breaking Bad took place, but in Venice Beach near Los Angeles!  I went out for a walk (in the dream) and got lost.

Thursday night I went on Betty-Anne's first art walk this year.   We went along Dundas West again.  At one place there was an art installation with a birthday theme, and coincidentally the place smelled like cake!

Friday the Fun-Loving Friends Meetup had an event at the Dutch Dreams ice cream place.  I didn't have to walk far, but it was at 5:30 on the same day that John and Kathrine were bringing falafels over. (They arrived just as I was leaving.) As a result, I had to have my dessert before my dinner--I hope that isn't against the law!  And I finished my ice cream so quickly that I got brain freeze.  I got back home before they'd even started dinner, which was convenient.

Yesterday afternoon I saw the last of the Met opera cinema casts this season:  a double bill of Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci.  It was very entertaining, especially the latter's commedia dell'arte play within a play.  They told us the operas being getting the cinemacast treatment next year, and I'm interested in Wagner's Tannhauser, Verdi's Otello and Bizet's The Pearl Fishers.

Today Moira and I went to Wychwood Barns and bought a new compost bin for $15. (Joe Mihevc's blurb had said they were free, but it was still a pretty good price.)

Another book club

Saturday I finished both Ragtime and At the Back of the North Wind.  Now I'm back to reading the foreigners issue of Lapham's Quarterly.

On Sunday I went to the book club to talk about the latter book, which was at the same place as my memoir group!  John Snow was feeling unwell, so I played host.  Just four people came, and John's decided to disband the group. (He still has the Dickens-Hardy book club.)

On the way there I noticed a big rally at Queen's Park to commemorate the centenary of the Armenian genocide.  I also notice a pro-Turkish counter-demonstration across the street from it.  One of the Turkish signs said: "Armenian hate propaganda has no place in multicultural Canada." That's why I don't like outlawing "hate speech"--it's a slippery slope.

Last week at the choir we started doing the song "Can You Can-Can" (to Offenbach's melody) from the kitschy Nicole Kidman musical Moulin Rouge.  For the first time I wondered whether I really want to be in that choir!  This week we started "Pie Jesu" from Requiem by (please don't laugh) Andrew Lloyd Webber.

My cipralex ran out so I went for a refill and I turns out I have to go to see Dr. Hassan tomorrow to renew the prescription!  And I thought it was just a short time since the last renewal.

On The Huffington Post recently there was a report about a Satanist suing the state government.  I posted, "If I had to live in Oklahoma I'd probably become a Satanist too!"  Someone responded "I'm from Oklahoma, and that is so not nice," so I wrote another post: "You Oklahomans have my sympathy, but not as much as Floridians."

Facebook groups

Sunday afternoon was the latest ROLT event.  It was about translated foreign-language writing, and I titled it "Speak white!" I read the Grimm fairy tale "The Six Servants" (someone compared it to the X-Men!) and Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale "The Shepherdess and the Sheep." These were both stories that I first encountered in the Classics Illustrated Junior series of fairy-tale comics.  I also read that long sentence from Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul and a short essay or two by Michel de Montaigne.  Someone read some unusual poems by Wyslawa Symborska, and someone else read a bit from Sun Zi's The Art of War and a chapter from Antoine de St.-Exupery's The Little Prince.

In the past few days I've discovered a lot of interesting new Facebook groups.  They're on subjects like America in the 1890s/1920s/1930s or silent cinema.  I've been spending so much time on them that there's been no time for anything else.  Yesterday I missed posting on the Captain Snark forum for the first time in over three weeks!  This also explains why it's been so long since my previous post here.

Sunday will be John Snow's book club and I still haven't finished At the Back of the North Wind.  But I'm progressing, and hope to finish it tomorrow.  I'm also getting closer to finishing Ragtime.

I've scheduled some movie events for the History Discussion Group Meetup, all on Wednesday nights.  We'll be seeing Oklahoma! and the new Far From the Madding Crowd in May and The King and I in June.  I invited John Snow's group to see the Hardy movie--we'll be talking about the book a few days later--and I'm sure Bev will want to see the June movie.  I'll be keeping my eye on the Lightbox schedule to see if they're showing any historical movies in the near future.

Working at friendship

Last weekend I was watching the penultimate season of Mad Men.  The last episode ended with Bert Cooper's ghost singing "The Best Things in Life Are Free."

Wednesday I finally met Bev.  The weather was miserable that day, and she emailed me to ask if I wanted to delay, but I insisted.  I met her at the Aroma almost across Yonge St. from Dr. Hassan's office. I mentioned that song "The Best Things in Life Are Free," and suggested that while friendship doesn't cost money, it carries a different price:  sometimes you have to work at it.  When I went to see her in that weather, I was working at our friendship. (Imagine how much work love requires!)

Yesterday I met Dr. Hassan.  I had more to talk about than usual, what with the Captain Snark forum and the History Discussion Group.  Afterward I had an egg sandwich at What a Bagel! on Eglinton Avenue West. (That's a good lunch place.)

This evening I saw the silent Mary Pickford vehicle Mistress Nell as part of the silent film festival, at the Carleton.  As Restoration actress-Royal mistress Nell Gwyn, MP got to stretch her range as a sly fox outwitting her romantic rival.

I belong to this Facebook group about the US after 1940 where someone was complaining about someone posting pornish images, so someone else posted a Marilyn Monroe swimsuit photograph and asked "Do I offend you?" Getting into the spirit I posted Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" and Goya's clothed and naked Majas.  It turned out that one of the organizers loves art and she sent me a chat message encouraging more of this!  So I've posted Joseph Wright's painting of the bird being sacrificed in the experimental air pump, that Dutch painting of Jesus facing the High Priest, and several Renoirs.  I'm making a good impression there.

I'm now about halfway through At the Back of the North Wind.  It's an amazing children's book, which starts out as fantasy but soon takes an unexpectedly realistic turn.

Reading material

I have several books to read this spring.  I've been reading Ragtime for the History Discussion Group next month and At the Back of the Dawn Wind for John Snow's book club.  And I'm also reading the winter issue of Lapham's Quarterly. (The spring issue has arrived and it's been a quite while since I got behind with this magazine.) When I'm finished this stuff, it'll be time to read the second half of Our Mutual Friend.  Also, I'll be looking at parts of Barbara Tuchman's The Proud Tower and The Guns of August for the History Discussion Group.

Sunday I went to the Walks With Profs Meetup.  We started at the Dufferin Station and walked all the way up to Yorkdale Mall, though it turned out to be closed for Easter.  I had a good time, telling a teenager about the history of East Asia and talking about several other things.

The weather has been funny.  Thursday was so warm that I wore my spring jacket outdoors for the first time this year.  But Sunday before going on the walk I saw it snowing outside!  So I took down my winter cap from my closet and wore it on the walk.  It turned out I didn't need it:  the snow stopped pretty quick and it wasn't that cold.

This afternoon there was no memoir slam because of the holiday, so I tried to go to an intellectual-sounding Meetup group, but after I got to the hostess' apartment building I couldn't figure out how to get in touch with her so I went home.  Too bad--next week the memoir slam will resume and it'll be a while before my next opportunity to attend this group.

This evening I saw Robert Wise's movie of Rodgers & Hammerstein's The Sound of Music at the Event Screen with the Movie Meetup group.  It was about the sixth time I've seen it, but I hadn't seen it on a screen this big since I was a kid. (It suffers somewhat on TV.) I don't hate it as much as my Captain Snark post may suggest, though Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer don't have much chemistry:  I can't avoid the feeling it's his children she's marrying rather than him.  The beginning and middle are well-paced, but it drags in the last hour.  Too many reprises.  I still like that "Lonely Goatherd" number with the puppets.

History Discussion Group

"Just cash the cheques, you'll be dead someday"--Mad Men

Tuesday I was going to meet Bev for lunch at the Bobbette and Belle near her house at 1:00, but for some reason she thought it was later and arrived just after I left.  We'll try again next week.

Wednesday night I went to the first event of the History Discussion Group Meetup.  Anjelica started the group but withdrew just before the event, so I took over as organizer and hosted the meeting at Just Desserts near the Wellesley station.

Anjelica had originally planned it as a club where we'd get together to discuss a history book or a history movie. (She originally called it "History is cool!" which seemed to me to be trying too hard, like Fonzie saying "School is cool!") Venera, a Kosovar who wears a head scarf, suggested focusing on an historical subject instead.  So the next event, in May, will be on the world in 1914. (We may also get together to see historical movies.)

I've suggested some books to look at:  E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime, Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August and The Proud Tower, Rupert Brooke's poems, Orwell's "Such, Such Were the Joys," and even the comic book Corto Maltese:  The Ballad of the Salt Sea, as well as the movies Reds and The Wild Bunch.  I titled the event "The Age of Men," after a line in a Mary Poppins song.  The next event will focus on Canadian history, and I'm thinking of future subjects like the frontier, the age of revolutions (1776-1815) and the world in the two decades after 1945.

I've rented the first half of the last season of Mad Men from 2Q. (Shouldn't that be the second-last season?) It isn't getting any brighter...

Classic Book Club

Saturday I went to the Met Tales of Hoffmann screening at the Yonge & Eglinton.  Afterward I wrote a Captain Snark piece about it. (I've learned to add an image attachment at the head of the piece.)

Yesterday the Classic Book Club met at the Victory Cafe and we discussed the first half of Our Mutual Friend and a lot of other things.  Jane has already finished the book, so she skipped the event lest she spoil the plot.  The meeting went on for two and a half hours, longer than usual.

The organizer of the new History Book & Movie Meetup stepped down with the first event scheduled for Wednesday (and no location).  So I took over and chose the Just Desserts near Wellesley Station for the location.  This is the same way I took over ROLT a few years ago.  I reached my limit of Meetups to organize, so I dropped the one connected to the memoir slam.  I have a lot of ideas about what me might read and view.

Today I wrote a pretty long Captain Snark piece about the movie Eyes Wide Shut.  I'm really getting into this new site!  I've only just started to tell people about it, since it's a work in progress.

The Wonderful World of Captain Snark

I've started a new blog!  (It's actually a blog-forum where people are encouraged to leave comments.) It's called The Wonderful World of Captain Snark, and I plan to write one snark piece every day for the indefinite future on subjects ranging from movies to TV to politics to writing to "the way we live now."

The concept owes a lot to Mr. Cranky of yesteryear, though he focused on movies.  If I can bring back even a tenth of the atmosphere that prevailed in those forums for a few years, it'll be well worth it.

I got free forum space (supported through ads) and my new URL is captainsnark.freeforums.net .  I started it on Tuesday and felt really excited!  It's fun imagining all the features and making an administrator's decisions.  And I've already written four pieces, ripping into The Sound of Music, the TV version of Little House on the Prairie, Ronald Reagan and The New York Times.  My next piece will be in the category of manners, and it'll be about aggressive rhetorical questions.

Yesterday I finally finished the first half of Our Mutual Friend.  Now I'm going to finish reading the winter issue of Lapham's Quarterly, which is about foreigners.  I've already received the spring issue, which is about con games.

Tonight I went to a Meetup for Maritimers in Toronto. (If you define us as an immigrant group, we're the third biggest in the city!) Only two people were there, but Rome wasn't built in a day.

BLAZING SADDLES

"The little expedition down the river was delightful, and the little room overlooking the river into which they were shown for dinner was delightful.  Everything was delightful.  The park was delightful, the punch was delightful, the dishes of fish were delightful, the wine was delightful"--Our Mutual Friend

"The time has come to act, and act fast!...  I'm leaving"--Blazing Saddles

Sunday I went to a Movie Meetup with buffet lunch at the Smiling Buddha.  The movie was Mel Brooks' western spoof Blazing Saddles, which I'd seen at least three times before.  This is a movie that's basically thrown together, that'll do anything for a laugh, like Animal House and Airplane!  We even get the knee-in-the-nuts gag not once but twice.  There are enough successful jokes to carry most people past the clunkers and the so-sos.  I noticed some off-colour jokes for the first time. ("Men coming and going, and going and coming, and always coming too soon!")

Last night was the choir's spring concert.  When Beatrice was introducing "That's Amore," I couldn't resist interjecting that it had been in the movie Moonstruck. (I hope that didn't bug her too much.) Afterward I suggested to her that we do a Scottish song like "Will Ye Nae Come Back Again?" and she'll look into it.

The book club is on Sunday, and I still haven't quite finished the first half of Our Mutual Friend!  It's time to focus.

Opera gala

Thursday night was the opera gala.  When we sang the Champagne Song, while the soloists were singing the chorus was supposed to dance, so I danced the twist and the limbo!  Jenny was drawing sketches backstage and I watched over her shoulder.  Someone sang Musetta's Waltz from La Boheme, which strikes me as a rather sad song.

Beatrice has set the complete program for the choir's upcoming concert, and it includes "To Dream the Impossible Dream" and "That's Amore!" and "Vilia" from The Merry Widow.

Wednesday night I saw The Wrecking Crew at the Bloor.  It's a documentary about a group of session musicians in 1960s Los Angeles who contributed to some of the period's most memorable records. (Glenn Campbell was the one who went on to solo stardom.) It's something like Standing in the Shadows of Motown.  After seeing it I had to go to Youtube and listen to "River Deep, Mountain High" again!

Last night John and his family came over.  Katherine made chilli for us and I ate too much!  That night I was really late getting to sleep, and didn't get up till after 14:00!

In that online game Forge of Empires you can collect coins from the houses every eight hours.  I used to collect from them twice a day, but the last few days I've been doing it three times, which makes a big difference in the coinage level.  The catch is that I have to get up and go online early in the morning. (Then I go back to bed.)

"Go fight city hall!"

This is a persistent cold I've got! (I actually suffered nausea Friday night, but maybe that means I'm in the last stages.) I'm ashamed that it's been over a week since my last post.

Monday night I played hooky from choir practice to see Renee Fleming in the Met production of Franz Lehar's The Merry Widow at the Yonge & Eglinton.  Kelli O'Hara is really pretty, and the Met can find some great dancers whenever they're needed.

I found a video on Youtube that plays Camille Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals while showing each page of the score as it gets played.  Nifty.

Today was the latest ROLT Meetup.  It was for political writing and social comment, and titled "Go fight city hall!" I was caught by the change to Daylight Savings Time and was almost an hour late. (Even if I'd remembered the change, I have a feeling I would have been late anyway what with my slow condition.) But the others had got their own discussions going and I was barely needed!  I read George Orwell's "A Hanging" and let someone else read the Hans Christian Andersen story "The Little Match Girl."  I also brought a Montaigne essay and James Thurber's story about being called for draft examination again and again in World War I, but I didn't want to tax my voice.

I've just been reading "Such, Such Were the Days," Orwell's memoir of going to a snobbish prep school around the time that World War I broke out.  He was there on a scholarship discount in the hope that he'd win a scholarship to Eton and help put the school on the map--which he did--and they never let him forget that he was a charity case!

Still recovering

This was a heavy cold!  I missed yesterday's show, to be on the safe side.  But I hope I can make it tomorrow. (Several other people have been absent.

Monday afternoon I made it to the memoir slam.  Instead of writing about "November," I took it on myself to write an independent piece under the subject "Bereavement." They thought it was quite good.  The other subject was "How smart am I?" and I think I managed to be pretty funny.

Monday evening I also made choir practice.  Our new piece was the famous Welsh folk song "The Ash Grove." When we sang "So Long, Farewell," I pointed out that when the women sing "I'd like to stay and taste my first champagne," they should be saying "Yes?" before we say "No!" (For some reason, the score had them saying "No?") I'd watched a clip of the number from the movie version to confirm this.

Tuesday I went to the chorus rehearsal for the gala concert.  We're singing the Champagne Song from Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus (in English, so it's pretty easy) and the Anvil Chorus from Verdi's Il Trovatore.

I finished my grapefruit, but thankfully Moira bought a new batch!

The Friday crossword puzzle from The New York Times was tougher than usual.  Or maybe I'm just less patient.

Under the weather

"What country would you like to fly to?" "Wyoming?"--Dog Day Afternoon

Monday was Family Day, so both the memoir slam and choir practice were cancelled.  I did go out to see Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon at the Event Screen with the Movie Meetup group. (I'd seen it three times before, but never on the big screen.) With Al Pacino at his best, it seems to get even better with time.  I shared my popcorn and half of it got spilled, but I was in such a good mood that I didn't care!

During hell week I was joking about how it would be nice to get sick for the next weeks, and on Tuesday I did get sick and had to miss the second-week opera performances.  Be careful what you wish for, even in jest.  That night I went to the gala rehearsal and found out it was just for soloists. (The chorus starts rehearsing next week.) But I got the chance to tell Beatrice in person that I'd have to miss some performances, and she was understanding.  This is why I don't have soloist ambitions:  too much riding on you.  I remember the year when Jay Lambie was lead tenor in all twelve of our shows--imagine if he'd got sick!

I took my last sleeping pill and Wednesday I was in bed till 16:00!  I bought some nice big grapefruit.  Father's diet forbids them, but for someone in my condition they're the perfect food.  The best way to eat them is by skinning the sections and just eating the pulp, which removes most of the bitter taste.

I've been watching some episodes of the sitcom I Dream of Jeannie on Youtube, a guilty pleasure from my childhood.  Sure, it's a chauvinist male fantasy, but Barbara Eden had a flair for sexy comedy.  I haven't been up to reading more of Our Mutual Friend, but I finished Shigeru Mizuki's manga about fighting in World War II.  Looking forward to the third volume, about his making ends meet with one arm in postwar Japan.

Hell week

Hell week is finally over.  Six performances in six days!  There's always one point where I start wondering, "Why can't I just get sick for the next three weeks?" (I imagine that's a common feeling.) Of course, for me the hardest part isn't performing onstage but waiting in the wings.

At the Don Giovanni dress rehearsal Tuesday, at the point where the devils come out onstage to drag DG down, nobody came out!  The people in front were indecisive, and the ones behind got stuck.  (Some of us were late coming up from downstairs--including me!-- because this year the stage manager didn't have an assistant to remind us.) But we got it right in the later shows.

In the first scene of Masked Ball, there's a moment when we hand our scrolls to Ricardo, but we kept doing it late!  I eventually realized that was because we were supposed to hand them over while he was still singing, so we had to overcome the chorister's instinct not to get into a soloist's space while he's performing his number.

I bought the second volume of Shigeru Mizuki's history of Japan at the time of World War II. (This volume is about the period from 1939 to 1944.) I was reading it downstairs on Saturday's Don Giovanni, and it was so fascinating that I was late coming up and missed the "Che Piacere" number!  Nobody died.  Mostly, I've been reading Our Mutual Friend backstage.

Moira and Puitak came to yesterday's Masked Ball show.  She says it's one of our best productions.  They were late opening the place, so some of us had to wait outside in unusually cold weather! (I was only a few minutes early.)

When the legend becomes fact...

"You know M.R.F. [my respected father], but not as well as I do.  If you knew him as well as I do, he would amuse you"--Our Mutual Friend

Sunday was the ROLT event "When the Legend Becomes Fact..." with folklore as the topic.  I read the Grimm Brothers stories "The Poor Boy in His Grave" and "The Goose Girl at the Well," and the penultimate chapter of T.H. White's The Sword in the Stone, where he pulls it out.  I was also going to read Hans Christian Andersen's "What the Old Man Does Is Always Right," but someone else volunteered to read it.  Jane read a First Nations story of the creation of the world, and someone else read the first paragraphs in the Ghormengast trilogy.

Thursday was my 53rd birthday.  We bought a strawberry shortcake and ordered Chinese food.  That night I saw a PBS documentary about the Amish.

At choir practice last night we did "So Long, Farewell" from The Sound of Music. (I remember seeing the number in the movie when I was little and feeling embarrassed for these kids having to sing in front of all those people.) Don, who drove me to the subway after practice, died of a heart attack last week!  Beatrice mentioned the death of someone called Don last week, yet I somehow didn't realize it was the same Don.  Now Giovanni will be giving me a lift.

Hell Week starts tonight at the opera.  Two dress rehearsals and four performances in six days!  I'll be bringing my black pants and sweater to wear under my cloak when we're devils dragging Don Giovanni to the bottomless pit.

New computer

My new computer arrived yesterday!  It's fairly similar to the old one, but a new gadget is always fun.  I've already started writing a translation of a Portuguese pamphlet in the "lives of saints" series, focusing on Catholics martyred in Japan four centuries ago.  Once again, I prefer my old-fashioned wired mouse.

Monday there was a lot of snow.  Both Selia and Ernie missed the memoir slam, so I took charge. (The subjects were your favourite swimming hole and a sense of home.) There were nine people there, a figure I reported to the librarian as Selia usually does.  That night choir practice was cancelled again because of the weather, but I hadn't checked my email and only figured it out when I arrived there.

Yesterday Malabar delivered the new costumes for the opera and I helped unpack them as usual.  My Don Giovanni costume includes a habitant-like cap!  We wore the costumes for dress rehearsals of A Masked Ball last night, and Don Giovanni tonight. (Don Giovanni is a long opera, yet it never seems long!)

On Youtube I've found playthroughs of the King's Quest games, including number seven which I mastered years ago (with help from online cheats).  I've also found Cinema Sins, which features videos listing off all the things wrong with movies like Titanic (e.g. 20 minutes of false suspense over whether Rose will live, when we know she'll live because she's telling the story!) or telling us "How to make a Brad Pitt movie"!

Classic Book Club

"But, according to the success with which you put this and that together, you get a woman and a fish apart, or a Mermaid in combination.  And Mr. Inspector could turn out nothing better than a Mermaid, which no judge and jury would believe in"--Our Mutual Friend

Yesterday afternoon the Classic Book Club Meetup met and discussed Moby-Dick.  Some twenty people had said they were coming, but I made the reservation for just eight, and that was the exact number that showed up!  I had to raise membership dues (for this and ROLT) from five to seven dollars because Meetup has raised their fees.  I suggested that after Our Mutual Friend we do The Yearling and (after Jane's input) Vanity Fair, and they seemed happy with that.

Afterward I went to see some silent comedy shorts at the Revue.  They had Charlie Chaplin's The Immigrant (the one with the huge waiter), an early Mabel Normand, one with Gloria Swanson and Wallace Beery, and one with Charley Chase.

Tonight I went to choir practice, but only when I got there did I realize that there was no rehearsal this week. (D'OH!) Oh well, I like the routine of leaving the house on Mondays.

I found the classic Laurel & Hardy short Dirty Work on Youtube!  That's the one where they're chimney sweeps in a mad scientist's house. (The butler looks at them and mutters, "Somewhere an electric chair is waiting!" Don't think he likes them.) I also found the episode of The Cisco Kid that was given the What's Up, Tiger Lily? treatment on an episode of SCTV, but not the introduction where Edith Prickley says: "You like reruns?  Good!"

Toting time

Today I brought in my computer for examination at the Apple store in Yorkdale Mall.  It fit into my art portfolio, lined with a quilt, but was quite a bale to tote.  (I kept putting it down for a rest.  At times like these, I don't feel so bad about being unemployed.) Maybe we should have put it in a suitcase with wheels.

It turned out that the problem is with the hardware, and involves some parts that they no longer make!  I can still look for a repairman--I'd like to save my translation files--but it's over six years old and we'll have to get a new one pretty soon.  When I got home I felt like going back to bed!

Wednesday night we started blocking Don Giovanni at the opera.  The chorus has a small singing role but we have a lot of non-singing stuff to do.

Thursday night I saw Peter Jackson's third Hobbit movie, the one about the battle of the five armies except I'm not sure which armies they were exactly.  It was about what I expected:  lots of battles and special effects and new age stuff.

I've found a documentary series on Youtube that I've been hoping to find for a while:  the 1964 CBS production World War One, narrated by Robert Ryan. (I saw the greater part of the show on a PBS station some thirty years ago.) It's a pretty masterful treatment, with lots of old films and photos.

On Netflix I started looking at the fourth season of Good Times, after father John Amos left because Jimmie Walker's J.J. had come to dominate the show. (Mother Esther Rolle missed the fifth season for similar reasons.) Pretty cheesy, really.

Computer trouble

My computer's been on the blink since the weekend. (It's some sort of kernel panic trouble so it won't start up.) I got an appointment with a specialist at Yorkdale Mall on Saturday afternoon.  I've had to use the downstairs computer which Father and Moira normally use.

Saturday I finished Dicken's Hard Times.  Since then I've started reading the foreigners issue of Lapham's Quarterly.  It looks like a good one! Now it's time to start Our Mutual Friend.

Saturday I saw a documentary at the Bloor about the last days of South Vietnam in 1975 and the last-minute operation to evacuate refugees. (A few nights later I was dreaming about President Ford.) The American ambassador was in denial until very late in the day.

Sunday afternoon was the first event of John Snow's book club.  We talked about Dickens' Hard Times.  There were a lot of no-shows, but he still got six people.  The next event is Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton, but I'll have to miss it because it's on the same day as the March ROLT Meetup.  John's also started a second book club that's going to read Dombey and Son, but I can only read one long Dickens book at a time and Our Mutual Friend has priority. (Too bad:  I do want to read Dombey and Son someday!)

Monday night at choir practice we started Giulio Caccini's "Ave Maria." (The only lines are "Ave Maria" and "Amen"!) Last night I had to leave opera rehearsal early because I wasn't feeling well.  But I'm feeling well enough to attend tonight.

A filling

"He was touched in the cavity where his heart should have been--in that nest of addled eggs, where the birds of heaven would have lived if they had not been whistled away--by the fervour of this reproach"--Hard Times

Monday night choir practice resumed.  We're doing a new number from Fiddler on the Roof  combining "Sunrise, Sunset" and "Sabbath Prayer."  Tuesday night opera rehearsal also resumed.  We managed to block out all the chorus scenes from Masked Ball.

Wednesday night I saw Charlie Chaplin's City Lights yet again, at the Event Screen with a Movie Meetup group.  Among his other talents, Chaplin was a brilliant music composer!

Today I went to the dentist and got a new filling in my lower left molars.  The main inconvenience was waiting for the freezing to wear off. (The other day someone in one of my Facebook groups asked us to name three things that are better than they used to be, and I wrote, "Dentistry, toilets and the internet.")

Recently I've been watching the new miniseries about Marco Polo on Netflix.  It's competent hokum, action-packed if rather improbable.  Some parts are sleazy, hard to follow and even too dark to see. (The 1982 miniseries was so cheesy that they lifted the whole Tibetan sequence from Tintin, including the bald monk levitating!) For all its lavishness, there's something oddly depressing about it:  I felt the same way about what I saw of The Tudors.